Thank you Andrew for the nice explication!<br><br><br><div class="gmail_quote">2010/2/19 Andrew Lewman <span dir="ltr"><<a href="mailto:andrew@torproject.org">andrew@torproject.org</a>></span><br><blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="border-left: 1px solid rgb(204, 204, 204); margin: 0pt 0pt 0pt 0.8ex; padding-left: 1ex;">
On 02/15/2010 12:09 PM, Michael Gomboc wrote:<br>
> Why is polipo used and no longer privoxy?<br>
<br>
The first question is, "why a http proxy at all?"<br>
<br>
The answer is, because Firefox SOCKS layer has hard-coded timeouts, and<br>
other issues, <a href="https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=280661" target="_blank">https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=280661</a>.<br>
Personally, I don't use an http proxy, I simply let my browser talk to<br>
tor via socks directly. The user experience sucks, because you'll<br>
receive untold numbers of "The connection has timed out" warnings,<br>
because firefox won't wait for Tor to build a circuit. Chrome, Safari,<br>
and Arora (amongst others) don't have this problem.<br>
<br>
Once Firefox fixes bug 280661, we don't need a http proxy at all.<br>
However, given the current pace of progress on 280661, we may switch to<br>
Chrome before the fix occurs.<br>
<br>
The second question is, "why switch from privoxy to polipo?"<br>
<br>
Privoxy is fine filtering software that works well for what is it<br>
intended to do. However, it's user experience is lacking due to it<br>
lacking a few features, namely, http 1.1 pipelining, caching most<br>
requested objects, and it needs to see the entire page to parse it,<br>
before sending it on to the browser. Lack of these three features is<br>
the reason we switched from privoxy to polipo.<br>
<br>
We've received plenty of feedback that browsing with polipo in place of<br>
privoxy "feels faster". The feedback indicates that because polipo<br>
streams the content to the browser for rendering nearly as fast as it<br>
receives it from Tor, the user understands what's going on and will<br>
start to read the web page as it loads. Privoxy, necesarily, will load<br>
the entire page, parse it for items to be filtered, and then send the<br>
page on to the browser. The user experience, especially on a slow<br>
circuit, is that nothing happens, the browser activity icon spins<br>
forever, and suddenly a page appears many, many seconds later.<br>
<br>
If Tor was vastly faster, privoxy's mode of operation wouldn't matter.<br>
We're working on making Tor faster. However, purposely showing the user<br>
how slow tor can be with privoxy was a huge point of complaint, and not<br>
what we intended to do.<br>
<br>
Does polipo have some bugs? Sure. Chrisd primarily, among others, is<br>
working on fixing them. At the current rate of progress on firefox bug<br>
280661, we'll have polipo fixed before mozilla releases the SOCKS layer<br>
fix. Chrisd even wrote Mozilla a patch and submitted it on the bug.<br>
<br>
The final point is that this is all free software. You are in control.<br>
If you don't like polipo, but do like privoxy, then don't install<br>
polipo and use privoxy.<br>
<br>
The power of choice is yours.<br>
<br>
--<br>
Andrew Lewman<br>
The Tor Project<br>
pgp 0x31B0974B<br>
<br>
Website: <a href="https://torproject.org/" target="_blank">https://torproject.org/</a><br>
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Identi.ca: torproject<br>
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</blockquote></div><br><br clear="all"><br>-- <br>Michael Gomboc<br><a href="http://www.viajando.at">www.viajando.at</a><br>pgp-id: 0x5D41FDF8<br>